


A Harsh Winter

by Alicin_Wonderland



Category: Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre: Anorexia, Bulimia, Gen, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 04:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3676821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alicin_Wonderland/pseuds/Alicin_Wonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chronicles the development of Lia's eating disorder and describes Cassie's in less detail. The fic is written in Laurie Halse Anderson's style. It did have strike-throughs in it but the text won't transfer from Google Drive to Archive with strike-throughs. </p><p>I own nothing, full rights to Anderson and the publishing house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Harsh Winter

Day One:

Lia knew she was something 

::awful/bad/terrible::

she was starting to believe the little whispers in her head telling her she was fat and ugly and worthless. This was the day she set her first goal with the help of a pro-ana site and weight loss calculator. Cassie promised to support her in her endeavor. They told each other everything afterall, they were so close Lia didn’t even mind sitting on the edge of the tub while Cassie threw up cheetos, pop-tarts, half a jar of peanut butter, and a whole package of Milano cookies and then helping her clean up. So on Day One, she went over to Cassie’s and they thought up a plan: Lia would spend the day at Cassie’s while their parents were at work and then when Cassie’s mom returned from work, they would tell her Lia was having dinner with her family. But when Lia got home she would tell her mother she ate at Cassie’s. 

Their plan worked perfectly and Lia went to bed with her stomach growling viciously in protest. 

Day Two:

Lia woke to cramping high up in her abdomen, the muscles of her stomach straining to digest emptiness. The thirteen year old sighed and stripped down to goosebump ridden flesh. Her ribs were just starting to protrude under pale skin and the bumps of her hips just barely there. 

“Six more days and twelve more pounds to go,” she said to her empty room and stomach. And then she would be skinny. When her mother left for work, she called Cassie. The best part of the summer was getting to be all alone to craft their Wintergirl bodies and slowly sculpt their skin flat to their bones. “My mom’s gone, you can come over,” she said to Cassie. 

“On my way,” she said, voice hoarse from her morning purge. 

Cassie showed up on her doorstep in a tanktop and shorts and pushed her way into the air conditioned room. “Let’s hop to it,” she commanded Lia. The girls, Lia the skinnier of the two, went into the living room and pushed the furniture back. In unison, they laid down on their backs on the floor. “Twenty crunches.”

After the crunches they pulled off their shirts and laid panting in their sports bras. Cassie picked at her stomach in disdain. “We’re such fat cows.” 

Lia looked down at her slightly less padded stomach. She stared at every single imperfection and hated herself more. “We really are. Let’s do jumping jacks and then our push-ups. I can’t even stand to look at myself anymore.”

Lia jumped and extended her arms and legs: stupid. She retracted her limbs: fat. She jumped again, in time with Cassie: bitch. 

::stupid/fat/bitch/stupid/fat/bitch/stupid/fat/bitch/stupid/fat/bitch/stupidfat/bitchstupid/fatbitch:: 

Day Three: 

::head/fall/tile/wall::

Crack.

That was the sound the back of Lia’s skull made when it banged against the shower wall. “Uhhhnn...” Lia moaned, slumped against the tub floor, hot water running over her. She reached up with a ginger hand and felt the back of her head, her hand came away clean. She wasn’t bleeding. Lia waited for a second before sticking one hand out of the shower and fumbling around for her phone on the lid of the toilet seat. 

“Cass... Here, now. Bathroom. Key under the mat.” Without waiting for a response she hung up and tossed it in the direction of the hallway, that way Cassie would know which bathroom. Laying back down in the tub, she closed her eyes for what felt like a century. 

But it was only five minutes. “Lia-lia,” Cassie said softly, shaking her shoulder. Cassie reached up and turned the faucet off. She pulled the shower curtain all the way back and Lia started shivering. “Here.” She draped a navy blue towel over Lia. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, I got dizzy and I fell, I guess. Cass, I’m scared.”

“I know you are, Lia, but you have to stay strong.” 

“I’ll try, Cass. Can you help me up?”

Cassie pulled Lia out of the tub and wrapped her in a plush towel. I have to keep going, Lia thought to herself. 

::stupid/fat/ugly/stupid/bitch/fat/awful/stupid/terrible::

Day Four:

Lia slipped off her green bathrobe, letting it hit the floor with a muffled plop behind her. She raised one foot forward, focusing on her chipped nail polish, and set it on her tormentor. The scales red numbers flickered for a second and Lia held her breath in 

::apprehension/fear/excitement::

the numbers appeared what seemed like eons later. 104.250 pounds. 

“One-hundred and four,” Lia breathed. “One-hundred pounds of memories and tears and half-truths and secret promises and FAT.” 

104.250 pounds too many. 

Goal number one would be met in two pounds. Lia was nearly broken with frustration. She just wanted to be SKINNY and pretty and to beat Cassie.

“Lia it’s time for dinner,” Lia’s mother, Dr. Marrigan, yelled up the stairs. “Come on, sweetheart.” 

“Don’t call me sweetheart,” Lia muttered under her cold breath. “Start without me, I’m just about to take a shower!”

“Lia, you knew we were having dinner, what is wrong with you?”

Lia bit back a scream. There’s always something wrong with ME, never with you. “I got...glue in my hair when I was working on my homework,” she lied. 

“Well, come down when you’re done, you’ve been eating like a bird lately.” 

"That’s because I’m fat and ugly and you just don’t understand that I need to fix myself and control what’s wrong." Lia muttered and then yelled a cheery, “Okay!”

Day Five:

Lia watched Cassie inhale food like it was the end of the world. First she ate a row of oreos and Lia pretended they were hard-packed dirt and bleached cement, making them as unappetizing to her as possible. 

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Cassie turned the oreos into soggy gravel. 

Cassie washed them down with green acid labeled Mountain Dew. Lia had never like it much anyway. 

“Could you hand me that chocolate bar?” Cassie ask, swallowing one more gulp of carbonated green liquid. 

Chocolate. Lia loved chocolate, all kinds of chocolate; hot chocolate, Hershey’s chocolate, chocolate syrup, chocolate ice cream. If it was made with chocolate, Lia wanted to eat it. (Every cell in her body told her to eat it) But she really didn’t need the mud-colored brick of sugar and fat anyway. 

Lia pushed the bar over the glass kitchen table. She hesitantly broke off and tiny, little piece. I only want to look at it and then I’ll put it back next to Cassie. Lia raised the haphazard triangle in front of her face and examined it. After a second it began to melt and rich mud seeped over the edges of her fingers, glistening under the kitchen light. Lia moved it an inch closer to her mouth - 

::badgirl/stupid/bitch/brokenpromises/slap::

The chocolate flew from her hand and stuck to the wall. “Lia, what are you doing? Are you really that weak?” Red fingertips rose to the surface of Lia’s anemic skin. 

“No, Cass, I was just looking at it,” Lia lied, rolling her eyes at her friend. 

“Well, I need you to hold my hair anyway. Did you really want to eat that chocolate?”

“And ruin how clean I am right now? God no. Come on, let’s just go to the bathroom.” 

Cassie jammed the rest of the chocolate bar in her mouth. 

Day Six: 

Lia slipped herself into an ice cold bath after setting a timer for twenty minutes. The water hit her skin and every nerve felt like it had been burned with lightning. She reminded herself that for every second she spent in the excruciating water she was getting skinnier. Lia took quick, involuntary breaths on the brink of hyperventilating

::in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out::

Lia shivered violently in the water and her lips started to turn the color of a new bruise. Her body paled underneath the surface of the rippling glass. She didn’t dare move, for fear she might shatter like a raindrop on pavement.

There was a sense of solitude Lia felt in the bathtub, unlike any other she had known. There was something deafening about a silence broken only be the dripdripdrip of the faucet her father promised to replace and her teeth banging against each other. Coldness hung in the air like early morning mist, barely tangible but still making the air heavy and bitter on her nose. But she was alone and that was the most noticeable quality. 

Lia spoke through chattering teeth to empty, frozen air; “This Wintergirl is living up to the name.”

Day Seven:

Lia’s alarm clock beepbeepbeeped her awake at 11:57 p.m. on the seventh night. She hadn’t eaten today, she hadn’t even felt hungry or had stomach cramps. The thin girl dragged herself to an upright position and rubbed sleep-glazed eyes. She turned the alarm off and blinked at the reddening numbers until they came into focus before her. She had three minutes before she officially met her goal. Lia dragged a fleece blanket up around her shivering shoulders and wiggled deep into it. She could barely keep herself awake, partly because it was the middle of the night but mostly because she was running on fumes and didn’t have an ounce of sugar left to fuel her body. Lia yawned stale breath as the second pushed her closer to Goal One. 

::can’t/stay/a/wake/blink/stay/a/wake::

The numbers finally flicked to 12:00 a.m. after an infinite three minutes an Lia melted into an exhausted puddle on her bed.

I did it.


End file.
